The Young Turks

"Please prove that Muslims want to decapitate all non-Muslims." 

You’re asking me? I thought you consider yourself a historian?

I think the Koran commands Muslims to decapitate some infidels, enslave other infidels, and conquer and demand tribute from the rest. So which group to you want to be in?

Let’s consult George Mason University for a more detailed explanation.

For the last several years, commentators (both Muslim and non-Muslim) have tried to whitewash decapitation, claiming either that it was un-Qur’anic1 or that it was a misrepresentation of Islam2 (or both). Western, particularly American, journalists have seized on these pronouncements and disseminated them willy-nilly, never stopping to actually check them against the Qur’an and against Islamic history. Doing so reveals the vacuuity—indeed, the outright mendacity—of the claims that beheading is unIslamic.

Two passages in the Qur’an enjoin decapitating opponents of Islam. Sura 47 [Muhammad]:3 says “When you encounter the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely; then bind the [surviving] prisoners tightly.” Sura 8 [al-Anfal]:12 states “I will cast dread into the hearts of the unbelievers. Strike off their heads, then, and strike off all of their fingertips.” Now without delving into a long discussion of Qur’anic exegesis, it is only fair to acknowledge that these passages should be read against others in the Muslim scriptures that are more pacific3 (as is done with the violent passages in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament). But that said, the most prominent Muslim Qur’an commentators over the centuries have by-and-large accepted these passages at face value.4 That is, they mean—as `Abdullah Yusuf `Ali put it in his Qur’anic commentary—“you cannot wage war with kid gloves.”5 One might also gloss these passages as only applying to Muhammad’s time and not to today,6 a view that is in vogue among Westerners (both liberal Christian and ardently secular) but that rarely shows up in Muslim commentary on these passages. And it is obvious that the majority of the world’s Muslims do not take this passage any more literally than do most Jews the Levitical code7 or most Christians Jesus’ granting of authority over poison snakes.8 However, just as there is a minority of Jews that tries to live by the Levitical code and a minority of Christians that tries to handle deadly serpents,9 there is undeniably a minority of Muslims that advocates, and practices, beheading of “unbelievers.” But since Christianity and Islam are so much larger than Judaism (2 billion and 1.3 billion, respectively, as compared to about 15 million), a small percentage of those can amount to large numbers, in real terms.

And the Abu Mus`ab al-Zarqawis of the world can cite not only the Qur’an, but Islamic historical precedent, on their behalf. The Prophet himself ordered opponents—700 Jewish members of the Banu Qurayzah tribe in Medina—beheaded.10 In 680 CE the Shi`i leader Husayn, the son of `Ali (the closest surviving male relative of Muhammad) was beheaded after losing an internecine struggle with the Sunni Umayyads. The al-Murabit (Almoravid) caliphs beheaded tens of thousands of Christians (admittedly many of them knights and soldiers) in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa during their reign from 1056-1147 CE. Likewise for the Muslim state that conquered and succeeded them, the al-Muwahhids (Almohads). Ruling North Africa and Iberia from 1130-1269 CE, the Muwahhids decapited not only Christian but Muslim opponents. Even the great—and famously tolerant (at least for his time)—Salah al-Din, who retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, was not above detaching his enemies from their heads. (Of course, if any Crusader justly deserved such a fate, it was the obnoxious, vile and violent Reynauld de Chatillion.) The largest and longest-lived Islamic empire of all time, that of the Ottoman Turks, was also the most enamored of decapitions.11 The Ottomans beheaded Serbs after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and Hungarians—including their King, Ladislaus—after the Battle of Varna in 1444. It is said that after taking Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II send the dead Byzantine Emperor’s severed head on tour. A few years later, the Ottoman Grand Mufti (the highest religious authority) was allowed to personally decapitate King Stephen of Bosnia and his sons.

Beheading of the enemies of Islam—both Muslim and non-Muslim—often is done by self-declared Mahdis. The Mahdi, “the rightly-guided one,” in Islam is an eschatological figure that comes toward the end of time (along with the returned prophet Jesus) to make the entire planet one Islamic caliphate. Over the centuries, a number of Muslim revolutionary holy men have declared themselves the Mahdi.12 And such leaders are often proponents of decapitation. The most prominent example is that of Muhammad Ahmad of Sudan, who declared himself the Mahdi in 1880, started a jihad against the Ottomans, Egyptians and Brits in Sudan, and by 1885 took over the country. Opponents—most famously, General Charles Gordon—were often beheaded.